May 25th, 2012

I was a big fan of the Bard throughout grade school, but it took the influence of my fellow eighth-grade musketeers, Kelli & Alexis, to inspire me to dress as a Shakespearean character for Hallowe’en.

Our California front yard is the perfect setting for Titania, Queen of the Fairies. Or Faeries, if you prefer.

I guess I was busy with school, because my ever-willing mother made the entire costume. The base of the costume is a muslin dress, with a gathered empire bodice and gored ankle-length skirt. That’s topped by a series of home-dyed sheer panels gathered into a ribbon to tie around the waist. A flower crown for my head, and ribbon wrapped flowers pinned to the over skirt completed the ensemble.

That same year, I did find time to build an ass’s head out of papier-mâché. But I don’t think anyone wore it for Hallowe’en.

I felt oddly at home frolicking about in this outfit costume around our new home…

May 22nd, 2012

I was really into Greek and Roman mythology (thanks to home schooling, the last bastion of the classics) as a child. I think I’d just graduated from the D’Aulaires to Bulfinch when I decided to costume myself as Aphrodite for Hallowe’en.

The dress was a thrift store find. Probably donated by some bemused bridesmaid who didn’t look well in peach, or who anticipated relatively few toga* party invitations. It’s actually a rather lovely dress if you don’t mind polyester chiffon. And it certainly fits better now than it did then. I recall some fast work with safety pins around the shoulders.

The real effect of the costume was made not by the dress however, but by the embellishments we added. They’re long disbanded, alas. So you’ll have to use your imagination.

Naturally I had a crown of flowers.

Some say Aphrodite carried the seasons on her feet (I’ve heard of stranger things), so my mother decked out a pair of sneakers with fall leaves, spring flowers, winter snow, and summer fruit.

And of course you’ll recall that Aphrodite bore a son, Eros, god of love, aka Cupid. Which inspired my ingenious μήτηρ to kit out my otherwise nude “Fun In The Sun” Cabbage Patch doll with a bow and quiver of heart-tipped arrows.

Of all my old costumes, this is the one I see myself continuing to wear. Minus the naked Cabbage Patch Doll of course.

*Yes, I realize this is a chiton, but how many chiton parties have you seen? Hmmm. Interesting idea actually…

May 19th, 2012

Finally, we come to a costume that’s just too darn small for me to get on anymore.

If you can’t tell by looking, I was a milkmaid. The brown skirt was ankle length (it’s the only part that still fits at all — now it falls about mid-calf). The white peasant blouse closes in the front with velcro and the red bodice fastens over it with more velcro. No wardrobe malfunctions here. There are matching pieces of the flowered lacing ribbon for my braids. I like to think I carried a milk pail instead of candy bag that year…

This costume also makes me a liar. I wrote before that 14 was the first year I made my entire costume. Well that’s just not true. Despite maternal help with costumes 12 and 13 (those posts are on their way), I sewed this one on my own too.

Interesting that my obsession with romanticized female farm laborers of the 18th and 19th centuries began at such an early age. Had I just learned that the stereotypical beauty of milkmaids was largely due to their exposure to cowpox (with resulting immunity to the disfiguring scourge of post-Renaissance Europe, smallpox)? Or was I (am I) simply echoing a genetic imperative from my Germanic and Celtic forebears?

May 5th, 2012

This may not strike you as the ideal dress for Lehar’s Merry Widow to wear to the ball, but there’s a very good reason it won out. I finally saw the costumes that everyone else would be wearing (this is a remount of a show from last summer — my singing sweetheart and I are last minute substitutions) and it turns out that of the four other women in the show, three are in gingham skirts. So this was really the best choice for the overall effect in our ensemble numbers.

The one down side is that the ankle-length skirt of this empire-style frock is rather narrow. Too narrow in fact for me to open my legs to play the cello! It was decided that the best remedy is to wear purple tights and simply hike it up over my knees when I play. Not exactly what you’d call a lady-like solution, but oh well.

If you’d care to know, I came by the dress through inheritance. It was sewn by my Aunt Linny when she was in high school. She inherited the sewing gene too, even minoring in fashion design.

May 2nd, 2012

I can’t remember if I went Trick-Or-Treating the year I was 16. I think I did, and this isn’t what I wore. But I do know that I made, and wore (what was I thinking????) this dress to my own Night-Before-Hallowe’en party at either age 15 or 16. Since I already showed you my actual costume from age 15, and because whatever I wore at 16 was thrown together and no longer exists as a costume per se, I’m going to pretend this was from 16.

I have a feeling this fits better now than it did then. I remember holding it together with safety pins, which I’d probably need to do again if I actually wanted to move around in it. I also didn’t own suede platform stilettos at 16. They add a lot, I think.

I vaguely remember drinking goblets of fake blood — perhaps while sporting vampire teeth — and attempting to use a Ouija board. Then we probably devolved into an endless string of Beatles songs and incense burning. Ah, to be young again!